MadCap's Reel Thoughts - "Star Trek: Nemesis" (2002)

So, Wrath of Khan is a phenomenally good movie.

This is a movie that would like to be that.

It fails.

And it fails hard.

This is the final outing for the Next Generation crew (in movies anyway), and this is definitely not ending with a bang, but a whimper. Let's get into it...

Nemesis starts off with the Romulan Senate getting 86'd due to not wanting to fall in line behind a new upstart from Remus by the name of Shinzon. The military seem keen on it, though, which I'm sure means nothing but good things for them in the immediate future.

...it's better than what happens to them later, I'll give them that.

Two heads are definitely not better than one.

In other news Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) are finally getting married! Before the Betazed ceremony can happens (sans clothes!), though, we have to have a car chase scene because Patrick Stewart wanted one... I mean, because they have to discover part of the plot that will become very stupid later. Basically Picard (Patrick Stewart), Worf (Michael Dorn), and Data (Brent Spiner) go to a planet called Kolarus III where the Enterprise has picked up a strange energy reading and find... a Soong-type Android like Data who, when reassembled, is given the designation of B-4 (also Spiner). This will become important later... albeit for very stupid, stupid reasons that I'll get into.

After the wedding, none other than Admiral Kathyrn Janeway (Kate Mulgrew) calls up Picard to give him a mission and references the previous three movies because why not? Yes, Janeway actually became an Admiral before Picard did, though I like to think it's from a combination of Picard taking Kirk's advice in Generations and making sure the Janeway didn't lead another seven year long away mission. Honestly, I'm okay with it, since even in real life people have a habit of being kicked upstairs in militant organizations when they end up being more trouble than they're worth.

The mission the Enterprise is given is to go to Romulus, where the new Praetor Shinzon (Tom Hardy) has expressed interest in peace talks with the Federation. Given that in-universe, the Romulans have always been at best in a Cold War with the Federation, this is a big deal. More so when they arrive on Romulus and find that Shinzon... looks identical to a younger Picard. It seems that the Romulans, being the devious lot that they were, somehow got the genetic information of Picard and created a clone of him that was intended for an infiltration mission. For reasons not entirely clear, the project was abandoned and Shinzon was left to die in the mines on Remus, the twin planet of Romulus.

Where Romulus is highly based on the Romans, but with the pointed ears of the Vulcans and possibly the stupidest species-wide haircut outside of a Baz Luhrmann film, Remans are bat-like creatures that look like the most diehard Nosferatu fans ever. They also have psychic abilities that are used for very, very squicky things in a bit. More on that later.

I will give my few bits of praise here, the few scenes between Patrick Stewart and Tom Hardy are genuinely very great. Shinzon's curiosity about Picard and the life he led is somewhat touching. It's a rare mirror for him into how his life could have been... sort of. Ignoring some of the issues of personal identity and nature versus nurture, Shinzon is an absolute monster who is after Picard's blood. Literally. The cloning process apparently left Shinzon with a condition of clone degeneration, something he can only cure by getting blood directly from his genetic template.

"Hey, Picard... do I have something on my face?!"

Also, the movie tries to have shades of The Undiscovered Country with a sort of mystery. The Romulan Senate was taken out by thalaron radiation, something that is being leaked from Shinzon's ship. Someone is also trying to access the Enterprise computers. B-4 is apparently a sleeper agent for some unknown party and - yeah, it's Shinzon. From literally the first appearance, it's Shinzon, so it becomes an annoying case of the characters in the film having to catch up to where the audience already is. I'm not saying that Shinzon's first scene has him coming out of the shadows wearing the "I am a villain" t-shirt... but that's honestly kind of what happens, so the entire thing is a complete waste of time.

As I mentioned before, the Remans have psychic abilities and Shinzon's Viceroy (Ron Perlman) uses his abilities to allow Shinzon to psychically rape Counselor Troi. On top of everything else, this act pretty much not only solidifies that he's the bad guy, but paints him as being pretty much not only as far from Picard as possible but also beyond saving. They try to make Shinzon somewhat sympathetic and it works to a degree... until this happens. Then, you're just waiting to see him get bumped off.

Also, seriously, Troi was getting mindscrewed every other week on TNG. Could they have not given her a break in the movies?

It is in the final third of the film that the Wrath of Khan parallels become... well, they're not parallels, they're just outright ripping things off. In the end, Picard is brought aboard Shinzon's ship and ends up having his big action hero moment because that's what Patrick Stewart wanted to happen and the films continue to be obsessed with trying to make Picard an action hero. He kills Shinzon... and then Data does what is possibly the most ridiculous space jump in history until Kirk and Benedict Cumberbatch do something just as ridiculous in Into Darkness... but that's later. With the radiation from Shinzon's ship making transport impossible, Data uses an emergency transport (that for some reason still works) to get Picard out, and then uses a phaser to destroy it, sacrifcing himself to save Picard, the Enterprise crew, and by proxy the Earth given that that would have been Shinzon's next port of call. Allegedly, anyway.

So, we have Spock sacrificing himself being ripped off from Wrath of Khan... as well as the set up for his return with Data apparently having downloaded his brain into B-4... somehow. Earlier in the film, they attempt to try and update him and it has no effect, but whatever. Data's coming back... except not really. Hell, to Star Trek: Picard's credit (not a statement I will make often, so savor it), B-4 is barely a footnote and we're told outright that this didn't work, so the tease was utterly pointless.

The Romulans who remain, having come to assist in the battle against Shinzon, thank Picard and the crew and it looks like there's a bright, bright future for Romulus.

A bright, bright future!

Oh... yeah... Abrams'd.

Oh, yeah. Only good things in the future.

Speaking of B-4 as I mentioned some time ago... Shinzon's plan to draw Picard in. It's not the most stupidly convoluted plan of all time, but it's certainly up there with the dumbest. So, Shinzon gained possession of B-4. Him knowing about the Soong-class of Android isn't unbelievable, given that Data's prominence was so much that the Klingons knew about him by reputation. He wanted B-4 to serve as his agent onboard the Enterprise. To do this, Shinzon:

• hid him on a remote world with a weak signal transmitting.
• not knowing that the Enterprise was going to be surveying the area as it passed through, or that it indeed even would.
• trusted that Picard and company would be able to escape the locals with the android.
• reassemble the android if they did find and retrieve it.
• That, after all that, the android would not have been damaged or even destroyed during the previous steps.

A lot of coincidences and lucky breaks had to happen to make this work, which is not nearly as dumb as Shinzon believing that the Enterprise would be the ship sent. Admittedly, the ship is within range because of going after B-4... so add this to the coincidence pile. I'm just saying, for a man who is dying and needs the blood of one very specific individual in order to create a cure, he's leaving a lot to plot convenience and circumstance.

He's honestly lucky that it was Picard he was dealing with and not Ben Sisko, he would have just sent his tailor to off Shinzon in spectacular fashion.

In the end, with problems like that and the fact that this film is pretty much the first utterly shameless attempt by the franchise to rip off Wrath without realizing why Wrath worked (a much worse one is coming up in just two movies), Nemesis just isn't a good movie. While it certainly has moments, they are very few and very far between. The villain is pretty transparently evil from the word go, his plan to get the heroes where he wants them is stupid and relies way too much on factors out of his control. Also, again, really icky mind rape.

At the very least, Patrick Stewart was having fun.
Pity that literally no one else was.

Not that I imagine that there's a non-icky kind of mind rape. Mostly because there isn't.

This also proved to be the last of the Next Generation films, and that was probably for the best. Like I said way back in the Generations film, only one out of the three is good and the rest of okay to very bad. This one is just...mostly bad. It's not as meh as Generations, but not as insultingly bad as Insurrection and it's definitely not nearly as good as First Contact, not by a long shot. It seems that the general public agreed with that assessment. Nemesis barely made back its budget at the box office, whereas all three of the other films in the TNG series made a tidy profit for Paramount. Not quite the success of the six films of the Original Series, but still pretty good... until Nemesis came along.

Producer Rick Berman attempted to say that the bad box office returns were because of films like Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and the James Bond film Die Another Day coming out at around the same time. While there is a degree of truth to it, I prefer to think that people were put off by Insurrection being absolutely horrendous and the fact that Nemesis just isn't really a good film didn't help, either. Either way, this was the end of the TNG films and the Prime Timeline of Star Trek until Alex Kurtzman dug up the corpses of both for Star Trek: Picard.

AND Y'ALL KNOW HOW MUCH I *LOVED* THAT!

Next time, we'll see how the films branched away from what had come before... and sharply back into what came before. Next time, there's no colon or subtitle to be found. Seven years after Nemesis took the TNG crew out with a whimper... we'll be getting into the domain of one J.J. Abrams and a brand new series. Next time... it's Star Trek.

See you then!

Star Trek: Nemesis is brought to us by Paramount Pictures.